As long as I can remember, rice has been something I could not give up. Well, I am born Chinese, where no-one would question this as unusual. Rice is served almost in every meal; I was so attached to my rice that I grew my own once.

Rice, being a staple in Asia, is used extensively; from the plain steamed rice that accompanies a meal, to the sweets made with glutinous rice, steamed sticky rice in a lotus leaf wrap with meats, the ever famous fried rice, rice noodles, breakfast congee (rice cooked in water until a porridge consistency), steamed rice rolls and so on – who would ever question the consumption of something so inherent to our culture and traditional identity?

I was no exception, and although petite I could probably eat more rice than someone twice my size, and not really gain weight. If there was rice, I would be content. When travelling, rice is the first word I learn in a foreign language, just so that I can ensure my ability to order it. In my opinion, eating other carbohydrates like potatoes or pasta doesn’t even come close to the feeling I have when eating rice. I would also choose rice over meat, as meat fills me up quickly; but rice, I can eat a lot of it. Being always hungry, rice has become my comfort.

Rice, unlike alcohol or drugs, is not illegal if you buy it under 18 years of age, or consume it in public. But like any addiction, it takes a lot of courage and honesty to feel and acknowledge what is really true for the body. From young, we were told that we are good children if we ate a lot of rice, since rice, being less expensive than meat, is consumed in much greater quantities. We were also taught, through a traditional saying “fan hey gung sum” (direct translation: ‘the energy of the rice invading the heart’, which is pretty spot on), that it is natural to feel drowsy after eating rice, and most would not question it. We would just feel somewhat unlike ourselves and unable to have optimal clarity after a big rice meal.

Yet the ‘comfort’ that results from eating rice is worth it, or so I told myself, even if being a bit muddle-headed was the payoff. I have long since given up alcohol, and sugar is not something that I crave (probably because all the rice I have been consuming has made that redundant), milk and chocolate were foods I had disliked since young, and when I had worked my way even into relinquishing cheese, oh boy, was I not prepared to give up rice. Whenever life felt stressful, I would make sure rice, a lot of it, would see me through. As such, this could be a situation that would go on, never to be questioned for the rest of my life.

But in 2012, I joined an Esoteric retreat organised by Universal Medicine in Vietnam; in fact, it was my first time joining anything Esoteric. Throughout the four days of the retreat, rice was not a part of the meals. I had enjoyed the retreat and its teachings, group discussions and wonderful nurturing food tremendously. Having said that, the experience also allowed me to feel how hungry I was without my rice. It was the beginning of an unmasking of the emptiness I had been covering up all my life. I felt how I had numbed myself from my own light and how I had been hiding who I truly am with this feigned comfort given to me, such as by consuming rice (I had myriad different numbing techniques, apart from rice). This emptiness was not something that was easy to swallow, and it so much fed into my arrogance and ignorance that on the last day of the retreat I went to the market and ate a plate of rice!

Throughout this past year, what has been initiated from the retreat has given me the courage as well as the support to be much more honest with myself. Who would have imagined a female Chinese, who cannot live without rice, would one day, not out of abstinence, nor because someone told her that rice is bad, but through an honest exploration and self-love, choose not to include rice in her diet anymore?

For in the stillness of my heart, overriding how my body is feeling is not okay anymore, hiding from the fullness of who I am is not okay anymore, and being led by a perception of any culture is also not okay anymore. Ultimately, when I chose to be in the livingness of who I truly am, the need to numb myself disappeared. It is truly no longer okay to perpetuate what is not true even though it has been accepted as normal. Once I realised this, my attachment with rice simply ended.

By Adele Leung, Fashion stylist/Art director, Hong Kong

Share

Has recently re-discovered the playfulness of hanging out with her soul, and hence forth found many new discoveries such as – that she actually loves people more than mountains and that simplicity is her new black. Living in Hong Kong, and enjoying intimacy with 7 million others.

286 Comments

Adele, I love this article about your journey with rice and how the comfort of eating it would make you feel less than who you are. Personally I have never been a rice girl, but I can relate this feeling to other ‘comfort’ foods such as chocolate, so I particularly love the line… “For in the stillness of my heart, overriding how my body is feeling is not okay anymore”. Your words are truly inspiring. Thank you…

Hi Sue, relying on the feeling of comfort, especially with food, is so common with us all, isn’t it?–however it is amazing that we do also have the truth of the body always too, when we choose to listen and feel. Comfort in all honesty, is truly not comfortable at all.

That is so true comfort in all honesty is no comfort at all, it is just some mad way we have chosen to be instead of being ourselves. What you share about when you make it about loving the body and that being the priority over the taste buds it really is simple to let go of yet I do manage to hold onto things that my body really is not happy about, I am yet to put Love first. But I have seen enough people do this that I know it is worth much more to be who you are than live life in comfort. A work in progress…

What a great line here Adele “Comfort in all honesty, is truly not comfortable at all.” It’s so true, that we so often resort to comfort (be this food or other behaviours etc) but if we listen to our bodies and are honest about this, it’s not comfortable at all!

“Comfort in all honesty, is truly not comfortable at all.” Yes Adele it is just a mechanism we use to hide who we truly are and ultimately dull our expression. Over time comfort is really painful and takes much more effort to take us away from who we really are.

This is so true Adele. I have experienced for a short term feeling of ‘comfort’ by eating certain foods leads me feeling awful for ages. Like you shared, ‘Comfort in all honesty, is truly not comfortable at all.’ When I choose to seek comfort in eating, the consequences and feeling of discomfort lasts much, much longer than the comfort feeling itself. Now, I realise it’s my mind that entices me to choose comfort and my body letting me know it wasn’t a wise choice, over and over again until I stop falling for the enticing feeling that takes me away from feeling amazing.

Adele, thank you for expressing this so playfully yet raising a serious question for further consideration. It is interesting to realise just how many (if not all) foods are addictive, and that there can be many reasons why we eat those foods – there is far more to it than meets the eye. Foods like rice or wheat are ‘normal’ to eat in certain cultures, climates, countries, and yet they can make us feel drowsy, bloated, or fuzzy headed – and we don’t question it, we just accept that as the norm. What you say here also confirms to me that we all have a choice about what we eat, and just because it is ‘normal’ we can question it, or chose to find another way.

I agree Jane, so many foods have a very obvious, adverse effect on the body, and yet we brush it off as acceptable. Coffee for example can give you several days of bad withdrawal symptoms. clearly marking it as a drug, and yet it is being drunk increasingly by most people.

I can relate to the example of the coffee Rebecca! At the time I used to drink coffee (very strong at that), I knew the negative impact on my body (which included feeling racy, bloated etc.) and yet I couldn’t imagine my day without my coffee hit, and I tried to give up many times without success. In the end, it was only by being truly honest with my body and taking responsibility for being prepared to look at ‘why’ I needed the coffee in the first place (which was essentially as a reward for all the other stuff I didn’t want to do and because I was exhausted) that I was able to give it up for good.

Yes Jane, and I find it interesting that it isn’t any particular food, but more likely to be the staple diet we were brought up on, and often that is the carbohydrates which fill us up. I guess this stems from times when there was nothing much else to eat, and the proteins and vegetables difficult or expensive to come by. Now we have a huge range of food to choose from in some countries and cultures and are privileged to have the choice, and yet the habits are so strong, and the comfort so great, we find it difficult to come to the place that Adele describes, to be still and loving enough with ourselves to feel the fullness of who we are and make a different choice and listen truly to our bodies. And this takes courage, as the whole system still hangs on to the accepted notions of what constitutes a healthy diet; we only have to look at hospital food to see that!

When looking at the staple foods of most areas they seem to be very rich heavy carbohydrate type foods. Such as Rice, Wheat, Corn. These staple foods make us feel heavy and bloated after eating them, yet they are the main source of food in most countries. These foods are cheap and are used to fill out meals so as to keep the cost of a meal down. I know for myself I found when I stopped eating wheat, rice and corn based products, meals became more expensive. This did not last to long as I noticed my meal sizes reduced overtime. Now I eat the same amount of meat I used to eat when I ate the accompanying carb based foods, but without the carbs my meals are smaller. It is as if the hunger you wrote about is why we seek these extra dense foods to achieve the full/bloated feeling so we don’t have to feel the emotions and feelings we have buried deep within us. So if we deal with these feelings and emotions there is no need to pack out our meals with these “filler” foods.

‘It is as if the hunger you wrote about is why we seek these extra dense foods to achieve the full/bloated feeling so we don’t have to feel the emotions and feelings we have buried deep within us. So if we deal with these feelings and emotions there is no need to pack out our meals with these “filler” foods.’
Thank you Toni, that is a very useful observation. Only when somebody is overweight there is talk about how they eat their issues away but if food can do that, then everybody is doing that all the time taking into account the growth of all inclusive formulas and the all you can eat restaurants. People want more, more, more. Food seems to be used in the same manner as alcohol and drugs. Pondering on that, listening to your body and working through your issues seems to be the only sane thing a person can do.

So true Jane, how we tend to accept traditions from our cultures and upbringing without ever questioning them. That if everyone is doing the same then it must be okay. But are the customs in our upbringing and cultures really loving and true to our bodies? And how do we choose when being honest to ourselves?

Great point made here Jane and written by Adele. We often don’t realise that many of our food choices do stem from our up bringing or cultural way of life. This can often play havoc when we feel to change the way we eat due to health benefits and the pull to eat a certain way due to cultural expectations.

I agree Jane, I too have followed what I thought was ‘normal’ but never stopped to question it. I have in the past 2 years really started to listen to my body instead of just following everybody. Interestingly what was ‘normal’ for me previously is in fact not normal at all when I started to listen to my body.

This is so beautiful, honest and playful, thank you. I too have observed how much I used to use food as a comfort, and how this isn’t really comforting at all! It’s been great and very freeing to observe all the emotions, beliefs and ideals I have associated with food and something I keep lovingly refining.

Thank you Adele for sharing this! It really helps me look at where I have been struggling, I like you come from a Hindu culture where rice and wheat is normal. They are the first solid foods given to a growing baby, crazy as it sounds but they are. To then make it a normal part of your life is easy. So here it is great for me to explore, why I haven’t been able to completely knock it on the head and still have cravings, there’s obviously some numbing still buried that I need to feel and work out. Really great to read your article as it has inspired me to look deeper.

I was first introduced to rice porridge at the age of 30, and often ate rice for lunch and dinner as well. At the time I believed that a 30 day rice diet only, would renew all my blood cells, so for a very long time I was eating rice without questioning it, even though my weight was like a yoyo. For five years now I have been listening more and more to my body rather than following any set diet and my weight has stabilised. I can’t say I am always listening with close attention but now I am more aware that my body will expose to me more quickly if it’s right for me or not!

Alexander, I have also vouched for a brown rice diet in the past, and with trying that my body was clearly telling me it was not working, nor was it nourishing me. Yet, I stuck with it because I was holding on stubbornly so many beliefs and ideals about what to eat and what not to eat. That did not work either.

It is so powerful to listen to your body rather than listen to a ‘diet’ as you have shared Alexandre. It is something that I too have come to learn – that my body knows exactly what does and doesn’t work for it.

Thank you Adele. Your article highlights how we get into a pattern of eating foods without stopping to consider what affect they are having on our body. We so easily conform to the ‘norm’ and stick with it because it is familiar and ‘what everyone else is doing’.

That is huge, Mary – not questioning and just following because everyone else is doing it, when we can all feel what is truth and what is not. Imagine how much anxiousness this must feel, and how much more comforting foods would be required to numb this feeling.

Adele this is so profound – I feel you could replace ‘rice’ with anything – TV, sport, any number of foods and drinks, smoking, getting attention, relationships, family, we can use just about anything to distract and numb ourselves. You perfectly describe how we as a society have manipulated certain things to be normal, that in fact are not normal or good for us or our bodies. It feels revolutionary the shift you have undertaken from using something everyday and growing up believing it’s normal, to be able to see the true effect it has on you. It really makes me wonder what else I consider normal that really is not.

I agree and how supportive it is for us to pose this question ‘It really makes me wonder what else I consider normal that really is not?’
Questioning what is seen as ‘normal’ is a great practice to have as it supports us to look deeper, to gain understanding as to what is us and what isn’t us.

Meg you are very right about all the different things that we use to not feel what is going on with ourselves. I like many have spent numerous years employing several numbing techniques at the same time, e.g. a big meal in front of something mindless on the telly, followed by a dessert, cup of tea and a smoke ! That certainly insured that I wasn’t going to feel how crap I felt inside.

Well said Meg. Exactly, we all have many devices to numb ourselves but food would have to be biggest. I know for years I used food to fill me up that is fill up the emptiness/numbness when I was hungry with not much thought as to the type of food I ate as long as it did the job. I still ate healthy but didn’t have the understanding to feel how the body responded to certain foods. Nowadays I can feel when a food is not agreeing with me and decide to remove it from the diet. I had never considered the possibility that food is for nourishing the body which is a loving gesture not over eating and filling full.

Adele, what you share is so great, having come back and read your blog. My body has been crying out loads when I eat rice, potatoes or any small amount of gluten or cheese. I have become more aware how my body shows me straight away how awful it feels, but yet I have been ignoring it. What I have noticed is the after effects last for days and weeks, I feel tired, on edge, anxious and I am unable to be present with myself. What I am starting to do is listen to my body and honour what it feels and not override.

Thanks Adele, your rice was my potato. Before Universal Medicine I didn’t consider a meal a meal if there wasn’t any potatoes, but like everything else that wasn’t true for me such as ciggies, alcohol, drugs, gluten, dairy the list goes on and on, potatoes eventually went out of my life. I now can’t actually contemplate what it would feel like to eat the amount of potatoes I used to.

I can so relate to the potato thing Kevin, especially roasted, crispy as chips, crunchy and salty! I relied on these like they were my support in life, how funny to think I’s built a foundation based on the support of potato’s! I’d still be 44kg heavier and sitting on a massive pile of them if it were not for Universal Medicine.

Kevin I so get this with potatoes – especially growing up in the UK – the potato was the ‘filler upper’ food. Roast potatoes, mashed potatoes, fried, boiled, baked – they were the staple that weighed us down so we did not have to feel the true lightness we are.

I too have had a defensiveness and strong attachment to my comforts that I have not wanted to let go of. This is a very supportive blog in the sense that, it’s okay to just simply say no to the comforts. I can see what you mean by the arrogance and now understand that letting my comforts go is all that is needed.

Dear Adele, Thank you for your beautifully written article which offers the reader a deep insight into how important rice was to you and also its importance to the Chinese diet in general. While reading your blog, I am remembering my big comfort food, just swap rice for potatoes, and you have it. I loved potatoes (how could I not having grown up in Ireland!). I was not fussy about how the spuds were cooked, boiled, baked, roasted, mashed, chipped, I loved them all. That was until one day I was inspired to explore and listen to my body. Slowly over time, I began to feel the heaviness of potatoes in my body and how I had used this to numb myself in order to not feel the deep emptiness I had lived with for a long time. Following this realisation I made the choice to eliminate potatoes from my diet.

I had a similar experience with the humble potato. It was our family’s staple carbo, often disguised as chips, roast potatoes or crisps, sometimes agonisingly bland as boiled potatoes or’ mash’ and becoming particularly insidious in inducing drowsiness when jacket potatoes, laden with fat-fuelled fillings became fashionable. Noticing the consistent link between my potato consumption and subsequent rapid-response blood sugar crashes, I eventually waved the potato goodbye, but shifted to rice as a substitute, only to find the same thing happening. It took me several years to accept fully that rice just wasn’t the health food I believed it to be – for me, anyway. These days I listen to the wisdom of my own body, It tells me what works well and what doesn’t. That often means being different and standing out like a sore carbo-free thumb, but it’s a small price to pay for vitality and a clear head. Thank you, Adele for putting the spotlight on a major cross-cultural issue that brings addiction, weight-management and wellbeing implications.

Thank you Adele for your honesty about your relationship with rice and how inspiring that ‘It is truly no longer okay to perpetuate what is not true even though it has been accepted as normal. Once I realised this, my attachment with rice simply ended.’ I have used food as a comfort most of my life and felt that I was getting away with it because it didn’t affect my weight. Once I started to listen to my body I stopped eating, for example, potato because I noticed a sensation of my throat constricting when I took a mouthful – a clear message from my body which I chose to listen to.

Thank you for a beautifully honest blog. Its amazing how things so socially acceptable can be so addictive. And its amazing that you came to the realisation, through honesty, that rice was not everything you had been told it was, or believed it was, and instead felt the way it numbed your emptiness.

Thank you Adele, I know there are foods that I eat and have eaten because they make me feel “better”, which really just means comfortable and not feeling what’s going on i.e when stressed, anxious etc… But It’s great to be reminded that perhaps the foods are simply stopping myself from feeling that empty feeling inside – something to explore further!

Hi Adele. Thank you for your honesty – I love how simple it was for you to simply understand why you were using rice, and with that realisation the attachment just dropped. It inspires me to look into more detail at why I use my own rices.

I loved reading your blog Adele! This has been such a big stumbling block for me. I go through long periods of eating healthy light foods and then I find myself reverting back to old eating habits which I realise dull my senses and limit my awareness. Why would I do such a thing? This is most definitely a question for me to ponder on. I love the clarity of your writing and am inspired to look more deeply at why I choose to eat foods that I know will stop me from feeling the beautiful light that I’ve felt I am.

This is a great article on the manipulations that are played around cultural food. Growing up for me, my mother would make a Welsh soup called ‘Cowl’. Cowl is essentially lamb on the bone boiled with lentil and vegetable’s. It was a staple food, and much was made about how much you could eat, how many bowl’s of it were eaten at meal times. When I decided I could not eat it anymore my family were horrified – much like the reaction to my refusal to eat the ‘meat and two vege’ dinners my mother made, I lived on salad sandwiches after that. Walking away from the should’s of our diet is a great thing, who wants to be ruled by a should!

I love this line Adele “For in the stillness of my heart, overriding how my body is feeling is not okay anymore, hiding from the fullness of who I am is not okay anymore, and being led by a perception of any culture is also not okay anymore.” Clearly calling out and speaking the truth of the body – wonderful!

Yes Oliver, it could be rice or anything else really. And how many billions of people who live under the belief that rice is what gives them energy and vitality, how many people are born into this addiction of comfort, feeling into this is deeply uncomfortable, because so many believe there is never another choice. But there is, there is another way, with The Way of the Livingness, we get to feel the truth of everything in life.

Thank you Adele. This article reminds me of my personal fix which was cheese. Cheese in the fridge shouted at me to be eaten and, yes, I recognized it as being something of an addiction but dismissed this with the excuse that all that calcium was good for me. When I started feeling my body and how I felt after indulging in a cheese fest, I realized that I had been fooling myself and that my body did not enjoy the effect of cheese. I am now free of this addiction and feel so much more healthy.

Even when I was on a rice diet I would allow myself a tiny amount of Roquefort (a soft blue cheese) because it would go “well” with a glass of red wine!!! Then I would make myself believe that eating rice after that would clear the whole thing away … Seriously! The dangers with some so called Detox diets is that people think they can get away with eating anything and clear it afterwards, when actually the detox in itself is not even near being healthy at all.

So true Mary that we so often eat from our heads when that is not what the body wants. It is so harming what is taught in schools and society as of what is “good” for us–how many portions of meat and vegetables we should eat–this is all educating our children to never feel what their bodies truly require, how many of us then head down the road of using food as a form of comfort and abuse when we grow up?

I enjoyed reading your article Adele. Rice also played a big part in my diet as a child and I continued to have it as a staple in most meals well into adulthood. I have been observing the effects that certain food have on my body over the last few years and since cutting out things like dairy, sugar, and gluten I feel less tired during the day and have better energy and concentration levels. Rice also went, because I noticed it used to make me feel very bloated. Now that I don’t eat those foods anymore, I look back and realize what a huge impact my food choices had on my health and my moods. Its very empowering to make new choices and feel the beneficial effects.

Adele, this is truly inspirational! I particularly love the revelation you had: “It was the beginning of an unmasking of the emptiness I had been covering up all my life.” I could stop rice no problem as I always felt uncomfortably full yet not satisfied after eating it. I have however replaced rice with Quinoa which doesn’t bloat me but I know I’m eating it to “get full”.

Thank you Adele. A beautifully graceful blog. It is true, food can be addictive, these addictions are painted over with cultural identity to cement their place in the world. For example, my Cream Tea and Pastry that was a pre-requisite each time I visited my home country from the big smoke in the past. I was collaborating with so much more than just a scone and a pastry, they were loaded with comfort, numbing and false belonging, thorough identity with a place and culture. That is even before I looked at what they were doing to my body physiologically. Simple without judgement, let’s just ask why and see what our bodies have to say… Thank you.

I use to fry Mochi on the pan which is a Japanese desert made with glutinous rice and then have it with Maple syrup. That would completely give me a buzz but would also plunge me into daydreaming afterwards!

“For in the stillness of my heart, overriding how my body is feeling is not okay anymore, hiding from the fullness of who I am is not okay anymore, and being led by a perception of any culture is also not okay anymore.” The power of these words, Adele, is deeply inspiring. Thank you.

Hi Adele, This blog brings a clear message of how we can use food in life. Its not always used to bring health and vitality to the body, its actually mostly eaten to stop us feeling hunger – but is the hunger we feel real? – of course for some in war torn places or during famine it can be – but for most in the western world food is readily available and we rarely stop to look at or feel the true needs of the body. Thanks for sharing your journey with us Adele, it reminds me to continue to look at my own diet and ask does it bring me vitality or numbs me.

Adele, I found your story so moving. The last paragraph brought tears of joy as I can feel your honesty showing you your own truth…and how this rediscovery of and choice to embrace yourself has allowed you to open up and love humanity….

Here is the answer to all the worlds hatred and abuses.

I love how you realized that living as less than you are and all that goes with it is “…not okay anymore” and then how your need for comforts dropped away…this is So beautiful.

I also went down the route of cutting out stodgy filling foods. Rice was the last to go after bread, pasta and potatoes, although I still have cravings for certain high sugar starchy foods, I have a register in my body of how I felt after I’d eaten it last, so that helps me to not choose to eat it again.

I grew up in japan where rice is also a staple. People eat it like they eat bread in the west – breakfast, lunch and dinner! Now wonder so much of the workforce of the world are ready for a nap in the afternoon. It took me a long time to let go of my attachment to rice. I realised in the end it wasn’t really the rice, but it was the comfort that it provided that I was enjoying. Then I thought – if I’m turning to food to be comforted, there’s got to be something amiss in my life. These days when I feel a craving for comforting food, instead of hopping to the nearest chinese takeaway, I look at what is going on in my life, what am I feeling, what am I trying to avoid feeling.

Jinya I love what you share something for me to ponder on, as I am still using some foods as comfort. So really I need to look at what’s going on in my life, what am I feeling and what am I trying to avoid feeling.

What am I trying to avoid feeling? Thank you Jinya and Amita for this question, we often don’t allow ourselves to feel what is really going on, and our body has to suffer the consequences. A great reminder to keep feeling and listening to the body.

“When I chose to be in the livingness of who I truly am, the need to numb myself disappeared” – this is huge, it shows a different way for approaching every addiction/vice we use to ‘numb’ – it’s not about getting a person to understand that the vice is not good for them, it is about allowing them to feel who they truly are and how to support that with the ‘livingness’ – then the vices are not needed.

Thank you Adele for your honest sharing of your experience with rice that says so much more. “It is truly no longer okay to perpetuate what is not true even though it has been accepted as normal.”
A very powerful article loaded with the love you have for yourself for us to feel.

Thank you Adele for a great article on rice and cultural foods. I stopped eating rice and potatoes at the same time last year as I felt that these foods were having the same effect as bread on my body. How fabulous to have a body that we can listen to, directing us to the foods that really agree with us.

“Who would have imagined a female Chinese, who cannot live without rice, would one day, not out of abstinence, nor because someone told her that rice is bad, but through an honest exploration and self-love, choose not to include rice in her diet anymore?” How amazing to break a mould that doesn’t fit and feel honestly what feels right even if it goes against the norm of culture.

So true Rachel. The norm of a culture once felt so huge and overpowering to me. But actually beliefs only bind when we allow them precedence over what the body feels. It is empowering to be with the body, for we cannot hurt the body when we are with it, it does not allow us to. If it’s not truth, it is not truth, and this is a daily on-going revelation.

Adele this is beautiful – I too have felt the “stillness of my heart” which when given opportunity can override any feelings of desire towards a food of comfort, craving of stimulation, or search of a dulling food.

From my body to yours Adele, your willingness to listen to your body when it said rice dampens my heart and makes me feel sleepy, is inspiring. Our bodies tell us so much when we choose to listen and feel, not always very comfortable for our brains!

What I asked myself when I read the introduction to this article was; ‘Were you born Chinese or were you Adele born in China where your family tradition was to have rice as a staple food?’ We so easily take on the habits and traditions of our parents and place of birth and assume that that is who we are and need to be to fit in. I am finding it very liberating as I learn to just accept myself for who I am and this is allowing me to see others in the same way.

Thank you Mary, that is a great point to ponder on. And so much easier for us to be liberated from the ideals of a tradition or culture, even though certain beliefs have been existing and embraced by many for a long time, they do not necessary express truth. Perpetuation of a tradition does not make something truth, does it? Truth is something the body feels and knows.

“For in the stillness of my heart, overriding how my body is feeling is not okay anymore, hiding from the fullness of who I am is not okay anymore, and being led by a perception of any culture is also not okay anymore. ” Powerful, inspiring and so very true. Thank you Adele for the light that you shine through the truth that you are.

Rice is such a tricky customer, it looks so innocent, it slips down so easily, it often doesn’t seem heavy as we eat it, it can be plain, and yet, as Adele’s blog illustrates, if we stop to feel, we may well find that eating innocent looking rice numbs us, and takes the edge off the realities of life. Sometimes I crave rice, and sometimes I give in and eat it, but it is good to be reminded to look at why, because I know from my own experience that Adele is right, rice does make us foggy, so if I am craving rice, it makes sense to ask why.

I always liked rice but what I really liked was toasted bread or fresh bread, i.e. wheat. It turns out that parts of wheat break down to peptides in the stomach and peptides can get through the blood brain barrier and give you a mild euphoric feeling. That makes a lot of sense to me – no wonder I felt good after a big plate of spaghetti even though I could hardly move.

That’s beautiful Adele. If we are tuned in, our bodies will let us know if what we are eating is working for us. Next up comes the discipline, if we know it doesn’t work for us are we going to continue just because it tastes nice or will we commit to ourselves and not put anything in our bodies that will lessen us?

I love how this article relates to an addictive quality to a food that few people would consider addictive, certainly not in a scientifically proven way. Yet if our body is our best marker of what a food does to us, it is worth listening to it as Adele has shared here. If rice can be used as a sweetener for life, how many foods are used to dull and dampen our natural vibrancy. From my own experience I would cut out sugar, yet would be substituting it with another food to achieve the same effect, so for me eating food has to only be about nourishment, and not a desire for relief from emotional turmoil.

This is such an interesting expose of not only how foods play a part in comforting/numbing the emptiness we might feel but how the consciousness of culture leads us so far beyond the point of even beginning to question food as a source of distraction.

My experience was one of large quantities of red meat, that I have now felt to be really heavy and hard work for my digestive system, so not surprising that this had to be accompanied with copious amounts of quick burning sugars to fuel the body to cope. All of which ensured I never connected with the levels of stress and anxiety I was living with by not honouring the truth of who I am.

I am really struck by how we absorb a way of living and eating that we do not question and we don’t even know that there is anything to question! Your example of eating and being addicted to rice Adele is but one example of this. Thank you for bringing to my attention how cultural activities can be so sophisticated in the way in which they can keep us from being and expressing truly who we are. Homework for me to ponder on this much more!

The beautiful thing about learning with food is it just keeps evolving, as we keep evolving. The evolving from eating decisions made from the mind, to knowing more of what it means to listen to the body, is a day to day learning. As every day we are deepening our awareness with the body, and it is just so cool to discover we can work in unity with it, instead of against it.

That saying about the energy of rice affecting the heart rung true to me, having felt that very recently not only with rice but other foods (for me currently being brazil nuts). And as Tony Steenson commented it is a gradual process, first allowing ourselves to feel the body, the second part being the choice to work with or against our feelings. This latter I feel is where I currently am at, learning to appreciate, acknowledge and accept that none of those momentary tastes or completed tasks or conversations or thoughts or plans can match, my whole body feeling at ease with itself, and not fighting the feeling of not wanting to do what it is being made to do.

For me its been other foods that I use to fill an emptiness, but I know just how fundamental a staple rice is given your upbringing Adele. When you write “This emptiness was not something that was easy to swallow” I know exactly what you mean – and how that then drives me to fill my self with something that is easy to swallow, but just masks the underlying problem for a time without providing a real resolution.

Isn’t it truly amazing how such food as simple as it is can have such a profound affect on our bodies. For some time now I too have stopped eating rice, not because anyone told me but I could feel what happened to my body after eating it like getting tired.

The norms of one’s culture can be very imposing. In mine bread and dairy are staples eaten everyday in many tantalising forms. Giving them up did not make sense at first. Surely millions of people cannot be so easily fooled! Yet my body has taught me that we do need to questions traditions and assumptions. Thank you for your blog Adele

When my head craves foods like rice – I know in my body it does not ‘need’ it.
When I become aware of the ‘feeling’ inside, it is about an ’emptiness’, wanting something ‘filling’.
Having ‘got’ the message, I realise in that moment that I have disconnected from the love I am, on reconnecting, I am able to allow the craving to dissolve.

A lovely article Adele. It’s funny how we can be trapped in a culture that tells us that something is good for us. Potatoes were it for me, a bit like rice, they can be turned into many things, mash, roasted, chipped, crisps, sautéed, even flour…! Potatoes are a very staple part of the diet in the western world and FULL of sugar. They were a great comfort food for me and a meal was not complete without them. Little did I know that, together with certain other foods, i.e. chocolate (oooh especially chocolate), cakes, biscuits (all sugar!) I was feeding my emptiness. Once I starting making more loving choices for myself and realised just how I was using potatoes, I gradually cut down and then stopped eating them altogether, and I no longer have a craving for sweet things either. My relationship with food is ongoing but having the awareness of how certain foods affect my body or why I am eating them is a start and that is thanks to the presentations of Universal Medicine. Thank for your sharing your experience Adele, it’s inspiring.

“For in the stillness of my heart, overriding how my body is feeling is not okay anymore, hiding from the fullness of who I am is not okay anymore, and being led by a perception of any culture is also not okay anymore.” Awesome! Brilliantly claimed.

Thank you Adele for sharing.
You expressing your experience with rice has inspired me to look more deeply into the choices I make around food and the foods I use for comfort and numbing
“For in the stillness of my heart, overriding how my body is feeling is not okay anymore, hiding from the fullness of who I am is not okay anymore”
Beautiful, inspiring words Adele

When I ponder about that Madeline, saying no to rice becomes a possibility when first a liberation is lived from the knowingness of the heart, and this then becomes the marker too precious to say yes to any other man made bind which is simply not true. Writing this just opened up the awareness to then why I was born “Chinese”, where rice is our staple, and that is the food that attacks the heart and lungs.

Isn’t it true then that where we have chosen to be born reflects a lot on our choices but also how it is possible to re-imprint those choices? And what reflection we will then offer to others?

Hi Adele, an amazing discover that you have made for yourself. It’s that reminder that because something is said to be ‘good’ for us, doesn’t actually mean that it is good for our body, especially when we consider as you have done why we may be eating a particular food together with honestly appraising the effect a food is having on our body.

Wonderful Adele thank you so much for your blog and the insight about a Chinese woman and the true story about rice. You are living in Hong Kong with 7 million others and it feels like you are the only person who quit eating rice – that is awesome. You are now inspiring as the powerful and great light that you are all the 7 Million others – what a blessing for them!

I had a similar experience with bread, which I would consume at just about every meal. It made me a little drowsy at times, at other times so tired that I wanted to crawl back into bed. But just as you say, Adele – there comes a time when you can’t do this to yourself anymore and it just stops. With more awareness and the responsibility this brings accepted and acted upon, it is then very natural and simple to change what used to be normal.

Adele, thank you for this story. To question your reliance on rice together with the cultural ‘pull’ that would have been attached to its consumption is a very revealing story. But, once we connect to ourself, there is an ease in our food choices as they come from our inner knowing and responsibility to self.

So true Francene, what we put in our bodies is a responsibility to self, and that opens up the awareness that it is actually a responsibility to humanity. Every mouthful we eat, we are eating with and for all of humanity.

Thank you Adele, an awesome blog to read. I love and can relate to what you have expressed, “…when I chose to be in the livingness of who I truly am, the need to numb myself disappeared…” This is so true. From this it shows how much food is used as a source of numbness, and how in modern times many people live to eat rather than eat to live.

My choice of comfort food has always been potato chips, (crisps) especially salt and vinegar. I remember going into a cafe close to where I worked many years ago and buying a packet which burned my lips with the amount of flavouring on them. I went straight back and bought the rest of the box!
I just remembered that I got so full from eating the chips that I would lick the flavour off and throw away the chip, so it was more the salty flavourings I was addicted to.
Filling up the empty space with things outside of myself escalated until I discovered Universal Medicine.
I have come to understand that instead of pulling things in from the outside to fill the emptiness, I have it all within me and just need to let it out!
Thanks Adele, for in your sharing I’ve come to more of an understanding of choices made.

I grow up in a bread and potato culture. We have so many proverbs about bread and potato,every meal is based on it, it is not possible to imaging living without bread and potato.
I like, Adele, how you make a link between comfort foods and addiction. Energetically it feels the same and it serve the same purpose-to numb our body, to repress feelings. It is amazing how easy we can give up those foods and traditional thinking by simply be more aware of how our body feels. So simple. And so profound.

Like others, I have experienced certain foods as ‘staples’ in terms of providing comfort and distraction away from what my body is telling me is the actual story of what is going on. Thanks Adele for reminding me of the importance of listening to the messages which are often much more simple than what I would sometimes like to accept.

How sneaky and insidious isn’t it Helen, to have been fed the thought that staples are things as a culture we can’t live without, when it is precisely the staples that hold us back in expressing the truth of ourselves. Therefore, isn’t it true that the definition of what a culture is, is already separative?

Great blog…and achievement Adele. I have had food battles for years, especially with sugar which has been my go-to food when I am not feeling the best…
Gradually I am learning to let it go, as I feel that it actually increases a feeling of anxiety and nervousness within me!

Awesome Adele! Who’d ever have thought that rice could be an addiction! Great that you were able to not only overcome the addiction, but to see the way culture itself limits us and keeps us numb to the full truth of ourselves and our bodies.

There are these day-to-day-life addiction foods in every country and culture, in Germany it’s bread! No matter what it is, the more I claim to be myself, the more the need for those foods falls off. It’s crucial for me though to move in rhythm with my body, to not abandon a certain food, just because I think and know it’s bad for me.

That is how i have experienced it too Felix. Telling my body I can’t have something does not work. It feels fake like putting on an image to pretend to be someone else. I may still from time to time feel a craving, but going back to honesty as to why I am feeling the craving as well as how my body would feel when I eat a certain food that is not supportive and working from there is very helpful.

Adele I really enjoyed your blog.
What an amazing experience you have had being willing to experiment not eating rice, feeling the effects it has on your body and listening to the feedback your body is giving you.
As you say you are not willing to be numb anymore.

I didn’t grow up eating much rice, but my version of rice was bread. Bread as a snack with dips, bread for breakfast, bread for lunch and dinner rolls. So it was always bread, in many different shapes and with different moves. Many people will call bread a filler – I ask filler of what?

It is actually quite awful to feel how when we are ‘needing’ a food, which comes like a craving, it is actually not from our bodies but from our unresolved emotional issue. Then to feel the true harm we are causing our bodies by having it is a humoungus pill to swallow.

I agree Joshua, any need feels awful in the body, the dependency towards something be it food, relationship, music-all of which I have medicated with one time or another in my life, is just horrible to feel. Although the truth is, when I was willing to be honest to this, that there is a feeling of being imprisoned with any dependency, it opened up a resolution and commitment to get to the bottom of freeing myself from this hold. And this freedom is so possible, for everyone, when we hold precious and honor what is true within our hearts.

I love what you have shared Adele. I used to buy rice by the sack and eat 3 bowls in a meal. There is a strong belief in Asian culture that we should eat the same meal together for sharing and connection. This comes before listening to the body and I am still breaking through these beliefs I’ve held around food and family. That empty feeling I still get sometimes and I might find some other food to comfort me. You show a way to address what is really going on with seeking comfort by looking beyond the vices we use to not feel.

Hi Annie, true there is a strong bind in Asian cultures in eating together as a family with everyone eating and sharing the same foods. After changing my diet to gluten, dairy and grain free, one of the most common remarks from my family is how much they wish we can share the foods they liked, again. So beyond the comfort that our food gives us, we are also held by the comfort that a family unit has believed to imbue.

Such a great article Adele. I have had similar questions around my choice not to eat certain foods because of my background. A French mother and an Eqyptian father, people think I’m crazy for not eating butter or pastries. The notion that I’m missing out is the first thing people comment on.
I can absolutely feel how much I numb myself with food. The moment I feel down I reach for carbs.
I’ve also experienced giving up the need for rice. I started to realise how tired it made me feel. It was enjoyable at the time of eating but I’d always feel blah and sluggish not long after. These days if I’m cooking for myself I find an asian curry or stirfry feels so much lighter just as it is without the need to bulk it up.

Thank you Adele, I really enjoyed your sharing , so great to be able to give up the eating of rice, something that is so embedded in the Chinese way of life, and to be able to listen with honesty, what the body was telling you.

Adele it is just gorgeous to hear your story exposing your truth about rice. I’m not Chinese, but I spent a lot of time in Asia and loved rice too. I was reluctant to give it up, but in the end, my body talked to me loud and clear showing me the heaviness and discomfort I felt from eating rice.

‘the energy of the rice invading the heart’ – wow. Isn’t is amazing that a culture can have this awareness yet still have rice as its staple dish?! I was born in Hong Kong and although not Chinese and now living in Australia, I too was obsessed with rice. Especially when I discovered gluten was an intruder to my clarity, rice just moved on in and took its place in the guise of being gluten-free and therefore ‘ok’. Like you Adele, I have felt the numbing effect of this seemingly harmless grain. I love the awareness that you were able to come to when you went ‘cold turkey’ during the retreat; ‘It is truly no longer okay to perpetuate what is not true even though it has been accepted as normal’. Now that’s a clarity that tastes better than a bowl of rice!

Liane, how true is the food that we think tastes good in our bodies? Recently I walked past a house which smelled of breakfast pancakes one morning, and immediately a thought entered saying “something smells good”, but when I kept walking my body says “no, that is not true.” What I smelled was comfort. And haven’t most of humanity equated comfort to be something that smells or tastes good? I certainly have. And if we have agreed to this thought, wouldn’t we be drawn to foods that keep us remaining in comfort our whole lives? But what does comfort truly do to our bodies? Do we still hold onto comfort knowing it attacks our hearts? How honest are we then as a culture and in what expense to our bodies when we say yes to comfort and hiding?

Thank you Adele for sharing how a simple and as not harmful considered food can be used to numb ourselves and to not feel our own grandness. So many cultures have their different “fillers” and all kinds of justifications for the good of them. I grew up in a bread culture and it is served with every meal. Talking today to people about the effect of bread on them most people can relate to getting super tired from eating it, but this fact is simply ignored, because to eat bread is so normalized.

Absolutely Rachel, it becomes so normal it never gets questioned. As have most other things that are numbing in society. It’s a double comfort, comfort of food and comfort of normality. A difficult prison to see on the other side of.

This is such a great exploration into using things (not just alcohol and drugs etc) to numb and comfort ourselves which totally just blows up the ideal that it is OK because it is supposed to be healthy. I know I have done the same with various foods that I deemed as healthy, but had not really listened to how they were affecting my body. Thank you for sharing.

I love your blog Adele, growing up in a Chinese family I can totally relate to your blog. I have never been addicted to anything I can think of except for food. I cannot image ever going on a fast. I find comfort in eating and the feeling of being full. I tend to over eat and not put on weight, using food for comfort and also to hide how I am feeling. I have just recently acknowledged how I feel after eating rice. I feel heavy and dull. I have always felt this but never really paid much attention to it. Thank you for the awesome reminder to listen to my body and choose food that doesn’t dull, bloat or drag me down. And to start making choices that are loving and supportive.

It was fascinating getting an insight into Chinese culture and the ‘norms’ associated with rice. Whilst we were told to eat our greens and think of the starving children in Africa, you were being told to be a good girl and eat your rice. Isn’t it amazing that it is well known that a big rice meal makes you a bit lethargic and foggy. I don’t think we are quite so honest in western countries about the effect of gluten.

In re-reading your blog Adele I can feel the effortlessness of giving up rice so intrinsinc to your culture. Your “attachment with rice simply ended” when you listened to your body and its wisdom. Beautiful.

Thank you, Adele, for writing about such an important subject like addictive foods and how it keeps us unaware and in comfort. My addiction has been sugar, and it has taken me years to finally let it go. When we stop and really feel what’s going on in our bodies after a meal, it’s pretty clear. It’s all about that moment of stopping, be aware and feel. The body does not lie.

I was diagnosed as a Coeliac 25 years ago. Weetbix was a cereal of choice as a child. Recently I noticed on the shelf of the supermarket gluten free weetbix. I really wanted to try them and when I did it was like having a big comforting hug. The feeling was so palpable and shocked me that foods can have this effect.
Adele, I loved how you have so beautifully expressed that by connecting to the fullness that we are, we will no longer have the attachment and need to have the foods that are a poor substitute to who we truly are.

I had always admired how healthy I perceived Asian diets to be: a small amount of meat or fish, vegetables and rice, seemed to be a perfect balance. Well, Adele you have just blown that belief away! I had not considered that rice could be not only filling but actually filling inner emptiness. My own body says ‘no’ to rice because I feel bloated after eating it. (Some conflicting information going on here.) Thank you for your lovely blog.

Great sharing about what we can use to numb ourselves and what becomes our comfort. Beautiful how you allowed yourself to truly feel how your body felt after eating rice and made different choices:
‘For in the stillness of my heart, overriding how my body is feeling is not okay anymore, hiding from the fullness of who I am is not okay anymore, and being led by a perception of any culture is also not okay anymore. Ultimately, when I chose to be in the livingness of who I truly am, the need to numb myself disappeared.’
There comes a point where the addiction and numbing can’t grab us anymore for feeling ourselves is too beautiful and too fulfilling to let go.

Whilst I have always preferred other foods like pasta and wheat to fill my emptiness, rice was always a good back up especially when it was soaked in a lovely sauce. Eating rice now however feels heavy and damp in my body so has fallen away and a poor substitute to feeling the real me.

Jenny, although I do not have the exact figures, but I would think 99.9% of the Chinese race are diagnosed with dampness in their bodies–this was what was diagnosed of me in the past, always baffling chinese doctors how I could have so much dampness inside! The foods we culturally are aligned to could be a reason, but now I understand how also as a culture we are also aligned with the holding back of expression.

It is so great to be able to feel what food really does to our bodies. Like you shared you were unable to see things clearly after a big meal of rice. The more honest I am about what foods do to my body and the more I feel how foods influence my state of being, the more I am able to make a choice to not eat those foods. It is a choice and for me it is important to feel that if I want to be in life in full and be vital, what supports me is to make the choice to not eat a dulling, numbing, heavy food.

In fact it is so easy to eliminate a food from our diet if we truly feel what it actually does to us Adele Leung. But here is also the contradiction of not being able to feel this because of the food that we should eliminate is actually dulling our feelings we have to rely on. So it comes to being honest with ourselves and starting to give room to and listen to our inner knowing, and from there slowly we can develop and restore our natural relationship with our inner most by eliminating the foods that do not support us in truth, but that we relied upon to numb ourselves from feeling the agony in us of not living the life we belong to.

Nico, certainly what we choose to numb ourselves in can numb ourselves from feeling we are even numbing ourselves, but ultimately it comes down to choices–as you say, it is a choice to become honest or not. A choice made in honesty and responsibility, opens up so much support that what would never seemed possible in the past, becomes accessible. How truly loved we are.,

What a great acknowledgment of what you could feel in your body, that rice did not support you, even though it had been a such a large part of your diet, and from the true love and honouring that you have connected back to within yourself you have been willing to forgo your attachment to rice. A beautiful commitment to yourself from which we all reap the benefits

I love your article Adele, thank you. I can relate to comfort food of any kind, and often find myself just changing the food to another, in fact I can find myself comfort eating a salad. The body is constantly communicating with us if we choose to listen.

Thank you for sharing this great blog Adele and how inspiring to read your last line – that your attachment with rice has simply ended.
I gave up rice after listening to presentations about it being a comfort and then hanging out with others who did not eat rice. The truth was it never came from my body saying Yes – time to give up so I found other foods to fill me up and nuts was one of them. Recently, I did an experiment and started eating some rice and noticed all other cravings had gone and I felt better and slept better. How could that be? How on earth could that be true when I know in my head that it really is not the right thing to be eating?
I stayed with it and went through a phase of loving and enjoying rice – small portions and doing my best to suspend all beliefs and judgements. It’s over now and the choice has come from my body. It’s like the need is no longer there and the tension of secretly wanting it has gone.

I love the experience that you shared Bina, as imposing upon the body is never a true choice and ultimately the body would tell us so. Heeding the wisdom of the body without judgement can sometimes be challenging to the head, but our bodies truly know best, and how do we know? By testing it out in my day to day experience would also be my choice to discover.

A great article Adele. I never found rice gave me a feeling of being well fed but potatoes had that effect on me. I could not imagine not eating potato but when I stopped to notice how heavy and drowsy I felt every time after eating it I decided to see how I felt without it. I found I had much more energy and did not want to sit around in a heap after a meal. My body feels so much lighter now that I take much greater care of the foods I choose to eat.

It’s interesting that this is exactly how I feel, now eating a lighter and greener diet. Despite registering this change, I have to admit I still occasionally overeat to get the same desired effect – when I don’t want to feel light and aware any more. To think most people, including myself for 30 years, go through life using food for this purpose much of the time…

Thank you Adele. Rice is surely heavy and numbing, it serves in this way well. But so beautiful that you chose to heal what you were driven to numb by stopping and allowing yourself to feel the truth. There are many ‘innocent’ addictions in this world that are way more insidious than the obvious ones such as recreational drugs like cocaine or ice but really work in just the same way, only with these innocent addictions we can continue to consume them freely being held captive in a much deeper illusion.

Adele, I can relate to your blog so well, despite being English I too had a thing for rice in all its varying forms. Steamed rice, sticky rice and in particular sushi rice. I noticed that when I got exhausted I would eat sushi as it was quick, easy and very comforting.

“When I choose to be in the livingness of who I truly am, the need to numb myself disappeared”.
I’ve found this to be so true when I’m choosing to be all of me I don’t find myself needing other solutions to try and numb myself to cover what I’m feeling in myself.

This article is powerful inspiring and challenging! I gave up gluten, dairy, alcohol and caffeine years ago but I still sometimes use food to numb myself, your sentence, “like any addiction, it takes a lot of courage and honesty to feel and acknowledge what is really true for the body” resonates very strongly with me. Thanks for such a clear open and inspiring article Adele.

Adele I had never thought about Asia and the addiction to rice that consumes much of the population. It is a huge revelation you have come to within yourself, a revelation that would have brought up many more to do with culture and beliefs, and massive jump towards self-love. Your knowingness that there is no other way but true expression of self is inspiring to feel. Thanks for sharing.

The consciousness of every culture speaks volumes as of why we have chosen to be born in that culture, what our choices have been in the past and how we can choose again now. Every culture gives us an opportunity to go deeper and to re-imprint, to be questioning and not remain in comfort of simply being in a culture. Culture itself IS the comfort.

I can feel Adele how writing this blog was a huge confirmation and clearing for you – “For in the stillness of my heart, overriding how my body is feeling is not okay anymore, …” And I can also feel how you have written this blog for all who are open and willing to feel and confirm for themselves that this is equally true for many choices we make, be it about food, relationships, work and every other aspect of life – where in the past we have sustained behaviours and even beliefs, that do not allow that deeper connection to stillness to be lived so expansively. Thank you.

It’s interesting that something so staple and normal in a persons diet can have an underlying reason to why it’s being consumed and that it is quite apparent too. I like how you made the correlation between food and an addiction, I know I have eaten many foods in this way.

So true Emily, it does come back to honesty. No matter how comforting a food is (and this can be said of any comfort, really), it is really our choice to be super honest, and the responsibility and commitment to act upon what we honestly feel, that eventually any comfort does not feel comfortable to continue anymore.

So true Emily. In the west, bread is commonly the main staple and just like rice it is just as dampening and numbing for the body. I found I could not live without bread at least sometime in the day when I was younger. It is revealing how the main ‘staple’ is actually the source of an addition for most of us.

It can be so easy to eat foods that don’t agree with us because they have become so much a part of how we cope with life. When I realise that a food is actually not agreeing with me anymore, making me feel bloated or heavy, or tired, there is a moment when my head might say ‘but I can’t imagine living without….’,’what will I do and what will I eat?’. However, surprisingly, if I listen to what my body is telling me, and actually wants, there is no desire for that food anymore and so it is very simple to stop eating it… and pretty soon I wonder why I persisted eating it in the first place.

That is a great point Kylie, that there are so many levels to let go in an ideal. Not only do cultures bind us in our food choices, the thoughts in our heads also do not make it easy for us. Yet, nothing is impossible when we know and honor the truth from our hearts.

Adele, you are so brave to step out from under the shadow of your comfort with rice because of how culturally engrained it is. Interesting how much we allow things to go unchallenged because it is the accepted normal for where we live. I can see it happening here in my culture as well, things that we do as a society that are perhaps not so supportive for our human frame.

Wow Adele, what an interesting post and just goes to show how ingrained a food choice such as rice, particularly in Asia, is in one’s life, culture, heritage, so much so that it stops a person from really knowing, and feeling the truth of who they truly are. It is the same for any food stuff that’s used to dull or numb, though when it’s stemming from cultural belief it exposes how strong ‘food and culture’ is, and the challenge therefore one faces to break it. Break the food, break the culture it seems. Your ending line so completely at-ease with letting go of culture: “It is truly no longer okay to perpetuate what is not true even though it has been accepted as normal. Once I realised this, my attachment with rice simply ended”.

This opens up for me Zofia why we have chosen to be born in a particular culture. And to live the constraints of a culture, to understand the difficulties in breaking them, but also to know that the strength of the heart is more powerful and resolute than any made confinement.

This opens up for me Zofia why we have chosen to be born in a particular culture. And to live the constraints of a culture, to understand the difficulties in breaking them, but also to know that the strength of the heart is ultimately more powerful than any man made confinement we have chosen to be in.

What I loved about your blog Adele is that your choice to no longer eat rice came from self -love – it is from here that we can all make true dietary choices and changes – this is the way forth for true vitality.

Adele your rice addiction reminds me of my potato addiction. I grew up on mashed potato, boiled potato and hot chips.
Thought this was the norm. In hindsight I felt weighed down and heavy.I feel so great now that I do not eat any potatoes, nor do I eat rice as like you neither felt good in my body.

The enormity of your courage and honesty is something to be remarked upon Adele. You not only faced your personal addiction to the food , but the massive cultural weight behind it.
So many cultures are identified with their food..it is as though the food is them in some perverse way. Australians don’t have hundreds of generations force behind a specific type of food…but I have noticed and experienced myself the place that bread occupies in our psyche. Talk about the digestive and dental problems associated with bread and it is as though you have proposed that people should remove both of their arms! In fact there are people who would prefer to do that than give up their bread.
These attachments are multi-layered; they are personal and cultural, enforced by fitting in to a norm that crushes the individual, and the true normal that their body is actually asking for.

It is very true Rachel. Some cultures have a stronger bind than others, and we are more identified with it and do not feel we wish to or can let go of the foods associated with the attachment and identity. But what if this identity keeps us from feeling and being the truth of ourselves? And the tension that results from this is so great that it becomes impossible to remain in the security and comfort of this attachment?

Adele, I can so relate to your story with rice and your culture. And not even having the thought that rice is doing something that is beyond feeding our stomach. My relationship was the same but with pasta, not surprising being born to Italian parents. I made the connection after eating pasta as it being a normal and good feeling. Rather than the groggy and numbed out state as not normal. Now feeling light and vital is normal and pasta coma is out.

With any comfort in life, a forceful abstaining or a need to live up to an ideal or perfection towards eradicating our comforts, does not work. I find that with a drive towards anything, letting go of one comfort because we think it’s better, only brings in another substitute, no different truly than what we have let go initially, just in a different form. But what if we give ourselves so much understanding, and with this understanding ask ourselves why we need this comfort, what is it that we do not want to feel, and how about giving feeling a go, and know that the choice is always with us…then the process is something we have lived and embodied, our choices then remain our responsibility and they become a solid knowing that becomes irrefutable.

Yes, I agree Adele. I lost 75 kilos from abstaining and so called will power. I thought I had won the battle of my food issues only to find that I can still get the same numbing out from binging on perfectly healthy food. the energy that I am eating in when I do this is no different to the energy that I am in when I used to binge on take away etc. The underlying question remains, Why do I need to check out at all? What am I escaping from?

Using the food to cover up the emptiness inside sounds truly familiar. What food do we use is not the issue, the issue is what are we trying to avoid feeling that knocks our door everyday and more than once and that ignoring it requires an immense effort day after day.

Like you with your rice Adele I felt that I could never give up cheese – consuming way too much on a daily basis. Since making more self loving choices with my food and changing to a way of eating that nourish me not satisfy my cravings, just the smell of cheese/dairy products I wonder how on earth I consumed it in the first place. A lovely sharing thank you.

I relate to your story Adele. I had a strong attachment to bread, having been brought up with the idea that it is the staple of life. It had many connotations, cultural and religious. I would rather throw meat away than bread and I had many uses for old bread. The sharing of bread is a powerful image that I carried with me for a long time. Now sharing comes from a deeper place and is more nourishing than bread.

This is really awesome Adele. It just goes to show that even when a food is so ingrained in a culture, it doesn’t mean that it serves everyone equally. Rice was your go-to staple, and life without it would have been unbelievably daunting if someone had tried to take it from you, but instead you connected to everything going on for you and your own lovely body, and felt that rice didn’t actually serve you. I find this a very immensely healing story and so would many people who eat out of comfort, for cultural preferences or any other reason that doesn’t involve true personal discernment.

It continues to fascinate me in what places we are born in–it is our choice, is it not? What cultural patterns and ideals belong to our birthplace and how we have chosen to belong to them. Belonging feels very important to us. We would do anything to belong. Culture gives us an identity, a security of being accepted, we must be okay when everyone else is more or less, the same.
Culture though feels limiting in the big picture. Feeling the truth of ourselves, we feel so much grander than how a culture with all its customs, defines us.
Rice, as a staple in the Asian culture, is a part of this culture which tells us–we have accepted that numbing ourselves is our preferred choice. We do not want to know. We do not want to feel more than what we limit ourselves to feel. We choose to remain in ignorance. We choose to hold back expressing truth. We choose to only give you a part but never the fullness of ourselves. We have chosen to belong to these limitations. We have chosen to not evolve.
But evolution has to happen and it is happening any way. If we know the truth of all of this, what then is our choice?

Wow so much depth of understanding there about culture and how ingrained are the limitations we place on ourselves, both as individuals and on mass such as how rice became a staple food – of course life preserving if we look at life as being just about the physical, but as you have shared Adele, holding back of our evolution as Soulful beings.

I’ve just come back from being in Asia, I knew rice was big but Wow I really had no idea it’s epic. Funniest thing, the day I returned home I went out for breakfast, walk into the cafe and there it was fried rice with eggs, cracked me up !!

Thank you Adele for sharing your journey, from a life full of rice to, a rice free life. I now find it amazing how we follow our cultural and family eating patterns without questioning why, especially when our bodies are telling us they are suffering because of the food we are eating. I remember that every Sunday after our main meal we had a sweet dish with cream on it and several hours later I would have a headache and a blocked nose – but I still kept eating the cream! It took me a while to understand that I was numbing myself with food and like you I discovered that: “Ultimately, when I chose to be in the livingness of who I truly am, the need to numb myself disappeared”. That was one life changing discovery!

Absolutely true Adele and I am observing more than ever how our cultures are purposely set up for us to not feel truth. It makes me feel so sad to see that we place our cultural behaviours above one universal brotherhood.

‘Ultimately, when I chose to be in the livingness of who I truly am, the need to numb myself disappeared.’ – very powerful statement and claiming Adele. It was so great to read this again and to feel how indoctrinated we are as a society or culture to live in a certain identified way, one that often does not truly reflect or support who we truly are and sanctions us to hide away the immense light that we are.

Reading this article about rice and Adele’s experience, is very similar to that of my relationship with potatoes. For all my life I had been a lover of baked potatoes, chips and mash. It was the greatest comfort to sit down and load-up on the vegetable and often I was encouraged by family to do so; especially given the fact I was always a slim person. After a course with Universal Medicine I remember clearly feeling a lot of feelings, feeling light and really great and I celebrated this by eating a large bag of chips with salt. By the time I reached the bottom of the bag, gone was the lightness and joy I was feeling; it was replaced by heaviness and I felt completely numb. It was from this day that I have reduced significantly and almost completely eradicated potatoes from my diet. I do allow myself to eat potatoes very occasionally and I’m very careful to watch not only the energy I do so, but monitor how my body feels afterwards too. Thanks for your sharing Adele.

I too have been a lover of baked potatoes and although I have given up baked potatoes I will have the occasional chip! Potatoes and bread we ate every day as a child and I was led to believe these foods were healthy. I realise now how I used these foods to comfort myself and to numb what I was feeling in my body. I am inspired to observe myself more closely and how I am feeling when I reach out for that odd chip!

Adele that really is a very illuminating account of how we can use food to temporarily fill ourselves up which leads to dulling ourselves down . I love the way that you have identified that for you rice was the culprit. Many can understand that cakes, pies and ice cream can be the villains but many would see rice as a really healthy option. And perhaps if we are only looking at low fat foods then it is but if we are looking to be our selves in full then any food or any quantity can get in the way.

Thank you Adele for such an inspiring read. I appreciate your honesty with your relationship with rice. I feel what you are also saying is that the invading of your heart from anything is not okay anymore.

Where else in our lives is something so taken for granted, that it is not seen for what it is. When we drive through every town in Australia, there will always be, right in the middle, a place where you can drive in, drive through and buy poison to consume that is the biggest contributor to crime, violence, domestic abuse, national illness, and government budgets, and yet these places that sell alcohol are just taken for granted. Imagine if everyone at once came to their senses and realised how corrupt this was.

Adele you have shared so honestly the expectations that come with many cultures around the world in regards to their staple. The pressure to eat this way to fit in to the family, to please the person who has cooked the meal or ” We are … and this is the food we eat” often stops us from experiencing another way of eating that supports our body to feel light and not so heavy.

I think that we have all justified what we eat or drink at different times even though we are overriding what our body is truly feeling. It must be even harder Adele when the food is such a strong part of the culture you have been bought up in. I think it is the same for alcohol in the western culture- we consider it normal to drink alcohol and justify it to ourselves all the time. Conveniently we turn a blind eye to the individual and community destruction that it causes not to mention the obvious signs that the body is showing such as alcohol related illness and disease and of course hangovers. Unbelievable really.

Thank you Adele for your interesting and revealing sharing. I hadn’t realised how hard it must be for others who were brought up in cultures where certain foods dominated, but when I truly looked at my diet as I grew up it was the old meat and 3 veg. and one of those was potato ! Most of us have deeper issues relating to these addictions (I certainly have) that need some more work to expose just what it is.

What came to me on reading your blog Adele is that every culture has its’ own ‘rice’. I find this really interesting – that every nation has some form of food declared a staple of the diet that actually dulls people down and prevents them from feeling what is truly going on and yet we deem this to be normal.

This is interesting isn’t it, and in the case of rice, it can be said that this is a health food so there is encouragement to eat more giving no consideration to how food affects the body energetically, this is very important as it effects how we feel both emotionally and physically and therefore affecting our overall health.

Adele I too find that rice is a form of comfort and numbing. I too loved rice and grew up on a lot of it. Though I have pretty much reduced rice, now and again when It creeps back in, I can feel straight away how tired it makes me feel. It also gets me to go deep and look at what am I not looking at, as I am aware that it is a comfort and a way to numbing my feeling. Usually when I allow myself to connect and feel the answers comes up. I am aware this is bringing up some deep buried stuff, so I am just allowing the body to bring it up slowly as I work through it.

Food can become our greatest comfort and addiction. It is not questioned, can easily be masked as being healthy and tastes great, as it can also be something that the body needs to have. But underneath all of that, while we need to eat a true and healthy diet, we can also be using food as the greatest barrier and protection from the world around us.

Thank you Adele, for openly sharing your experience with rice and the huge turnaround you made in giving this up when it was such a strong part of the cultural norm where you are living.
And as you have shared, “when I chose to be in the livingness of who I truly am, the need to numb myself disappeared. It is truly no longer okay to perpetuate what is not true even though it has been accepted as normal.”

What you have shared is so powerful but your last paragraph especially was pure gold. The livingness that you have chosen that now gives you the strength to refuse anything that denies you the stillness and fullness of you, is deeply inspiring…. and is the key to eliminating all addictions, food or otherwise.

Adele this is a truly supportive article with understanding how foods keep us from deeply connecting with ourselves. I love how you say in one of your comments that in seeking comfort it is truly uncomfortable. But your article is bursting with wisdom “For in the stillness of my heart, overriding how my body is feeling is not okay anymore, hiding from the fullness of who I am is not okay anymore …” I am sitting here feeling discomfort from seeking comfort as I ate too much for dinner to override what my body was communicating to me. A perfect time to read the insight you shed on this common day occurrence. Thank you.

I have come to understand, more and more, how we keep ourselves on a certain level of awareness and understanding of life and with each other through food. It is like we use food to bury all our sorrows and all the things that do not work so well in life. If there is something I do not want to see or feel in life there is always food. It is a constant companion, who is very reliable and loyal. But it takes away our clarity and vitality when we use it as such instead of using food as a source of fuel that brings our body what it needs to be, vital, strong and alive.

Within the Caribbean culture that I grew up in rice is a staple food and it took some getting used to for my family when I stopped eating it, especially at family meals and get togethers. I have spoken with friends who say that a meal is incomplete without rice and I used to be the same. However as I begun to have esoteric healing sessions and felt the sensitivity in my body I became increasingly aware that rice made me feel heavy and sluggish and when I stopped eating it, a natural vitality that was there could be unleashed. This I have found true for other foods as well. Nothing beats getting to know our own bodies and what works for us. Adele, reading your experience has helped me to appreciate that this natural vitality that has been unleashed was always there, but I chose food as my number one way to squash it down and hide my light so as not to stand out. Thank God for Universal Medicine as quite naturally now I have let go of many foods that don’t support me and consequently I am shining brighter than ever before.

Thank you Adele
Wow what a huge shift from using rice as your safety blanket to then discovering that you are more important than what you numb yourself with. That is true love,
We really do know our vices well and can choose to let these be more than we are. But I really love how you share here that by taking away the comfort – you were able to feel the emptiness and fill it with love rather than comfort.

Not hiding from who I am anymore and being in the fullness of my self and the stillness of my heart is just amazing and beautiful. Rice is not my thing but I have many other foods and distractions I have used and allowed to cloud me. I can feel a refreshed approach Adele, thank you.

Food is used universally to distract ourselves from acknowledging what is really going on and I know that various foods and drinks have provided me with a comfortable haven to hide in/behind over the course of my life. The more open I am to honestly look at my issues, the more I find the need to refine my diet. There is a huge difference in my diet now compared to what I was eating and drinking 10 years ago. I haven’t found all the adjustments easy but I do know that I love the ever increasing sense of lightness and clarity I now have.

Thank you Adele, I have had an addiction to food my whole life and have even sat in overeaters anonymous groups in the past thinking ‘What is this really all about’ and you nailed it in one sentence ” Ultimately, when I chose to be in the livingness of who I truly am, the need to numb myself disappeared”. Thank you

This is powerful blog on the role of culture and tradition in our diet Adele. When first introduced to the effect of gluten and dairy on the body I immediately went into reaction. How could millions of people who appear to function well enough be wrong? The culture I come from makes a big deal of food and whenever I go back home I encounter the disbelief that one can give up bread and cheese and still enjoy life. Although I understood well enough the detrimental effects of certain foods what was far more difficult for me to face was being perceived as weird, as not one of us anymore. This discomfort has in the main disappeared for me as I’m now committed to take care of my body and of myself.

Not many have spoken about rice in this way or in fact that of any food that is used to escape or numb ourselves under the auspices of being good and true for our bodies to eat. As you expose, it is an addition that is just as bad as any drug addition or the like.

Being addicted to something, it can be anything can definitely act like a drug and we become addicted to it for a reason and it’s a conscious choice to do so. Some addictions are very common and some are very bizarre but they all pretty much give us a sense of comfort and relief. It is used to cover up the emptiness we feel and our hurts. It is to avoid what we are truly feeling and avoid facing our choices. When we choose to listen to our body, connect to who we are, start to build our life with the fullness of love the need to seek comfort and addictions simply doesn’t exist.

This is a powerful statement Adele. “For in the stillness of my heart, overriding how my body is feeling is not okay anymore”. When we become aware of the effect any food or drink has on our body rather than the momentary sensation in the mouth or unquestioning acceptance of cultural ‘norms’ this is a taking loving responsibility for our own self-care and self-nurturing.

There are so many things and foods that we are choosing to subconsciously numb ourselves with to not feel the tensions in life. Often you hear people saying, I like the taste of a certain food or it doesn’t affect me but often this isn’t coming from the body but rather a pattern of numbing to not feel.

I use to eat a lot of rice too. I also felt sleepy, heavy and not myself afterwards. I dismissed this feeling and thought it was just part of eating. Now, I realised I was addicted to overeating to ensure I felt this way pretty much after every meal. After my first Universal Medicine retreat at Lennox Heads in April 2015. I too felt into the truth of how my body feels in relation to eating and food. Now, I listen to what my body is telling me. If any food that makes me feel heavy, dull, tired or irritable, I will no longer eat them. What I have noticed is natural or whole foods that are high in sugar generally affects me in this way. By listening to my body has been the most incredible way to eliminate exhaustion, anxiety and fatigue for me.

A great article Adele, sharing how it is possible to let go of things we use for comfort and to hide how our body actually feels by connecting to the truth within ourselves and honouring
that truth even in circumstances where it is going against the cultural ‘norm’.

Being born into a certain culture, we have agreed to be bound by the consciousness of that culture, this is something we would not usually question. But ultimately, there is a truth wtihin our hearts that we are more than what our culture has marked us to be, we are so much more than that. In fact who we are cannot be bound by anything, there are no borders in the love that we are, we can be born in any culture and raised in different ways, but the truth is our love is universal, and this is how my body wants to express in this physical reality.

Dear Adele,
I am inspired by your capacity to look at your numbing techniques and address them so promptly, within a year of your first Retreat! This speaks volumes for the level of self worth and light you were willing to accept, to be able to stand on this foundation, clear of your need to dull. I have been also working on a similar issue for 3 years, and there were oh so many other layers interwoven that needed unraveling! To finally arrive at the realisation that I was being confronted with the deeply held consciousness of both dampness and comfort, in a choice to deny my light; deny who I really am and what I am here to do. I am clear now and the choices are simple and it is worth deeply appreciating that I hung in there and did what it took. I feel a new foundation of love in my body, full acceptance of my light and a readiness for what is next, without the fog.

Dear Emma, ultimately how we are and what we choose is impulsed by the whole body movements led first by the heart in accordance to the rhythms of the universe and we are all on our way. No matter how we choose, we are all heading home.

We all have our numbing techniques and food is the most accessible daily ‘hit’ we seek to distract, by dulling or exciting. So too are our activities, our emotions, our work, our movements until we become aware of how we are choosing to use them to delay our evolution.

What else are we consuming in our lives that we simply take for granted, even if the signs of addiction are blatantly obvious. What are the things that are sold openly in our community that cause absolute havoc and dysfunction and yet because virtually everyone is consuming them they have such a self sustaining momentum in our community . Articles like this are calling out the obvious.

We can conform to the conventions and beliefs of the culture we grow up in without question because ‘It is just what everyone does’. When we choose to feel into our own body and question whether this habit is truly supporting us this opens up our responsibility to feel into everything we do, say and think and have an understanding of the energy that is in everything. A freedom to reconnect to who you truly are.

One man’s meat is another man’s rice. This blog explains clearly how one food type, culturally endorsed, can become a method of escape, of dulling the senses when we don’t want to address those feelings it actually supports us in masking from ourselves.

The culture we have around foods & beverages in general (& also specific foods/beverages) is very strong and often unconscious, and also largely tied into social events. Simple ones that come to mind are ‘cheese and crackers’, ‘chocoloate’, ‘coffee and cake’, ‘wine’, ‘bread and butter’ etc. – most of which at some time or another I’ve found myself indulging in with little regard and honesty about how they actually felt in my body! It’s been a real shift to be more honest and aware of how certain foods feel – sometimes even foods that most would consider ‘healthy’ – and to feel the clarity I have when I feel what I need to eat in preference to eating whatever I feel.

This is amazing Adele, and when truly understood we read that the reason why we use certain foods to dull, activate, slow down, burry our feelings is way more important than anything else… and so to look even beyond and feel why we need to bury, slown down or get ourselves pepped up.. As you shared Adele, when this is explored the need or craving for certain foods will go, without even trying! Amazing. Simply Amazing. Thank you for sharing.

Even though this blog was written some time ago, it would still surprise many to read rice considered to be a comfort food. It is typical for someone that if they were not used to feeling effects of food then they would just think it good for them and not be prepared to actually feel the effects in their body. Through Universal Medicine and coming more to feeling what my body needs, I have learnt about many foods that dull me and numb me to my body. Rice is certainly one of them and I found it very interesting that there was a Chinese saying around this to suggest this is not new information.

Thank you for sharing this insightful blog Adele, I am intrigued that you had a saying that meant ‘the energy of the rice invading the heart’ and it was acknowledged that the impact of eating a lot of rice was to make you less present. We all know what we are doing when we chose to eat certain foods and it is only when we are willing to take responsibility for that and explore changes to our diet that we can build our connection to ourselves and truly feel what foods would support us to be purposeful and joyful.

I love what this exposes Adele. Drugs, alcohol and anti-social behaviours are quite obvious ways to hide, but rice? (By hiding I mean where we are not ourselves). We can all be sneaky about what we use to hide but when we are super honest, we know what these things are.

This is a very inspiring and informative blog Adele, with gems like the “the energy of the rice invading the heart” and the fact that you as a Chinese woman could let your addiction to rice go. I never had that problem as I had other things as my comfort but can so appreciate your story. Thank you for sharing.

“Comfort in all honesty, is truly not comfortable at all.” So true Adele it just keeps our hurts buried beneath the surface and supports our copping mechanisms to drive our behavoiurs to mask the pain of holding on to our hurts.

I loved reading this Adele, I used to eat bread in the same way you did rice, a meal never felt complete unless bread was a part of it. Of course I always felt bloated from this choice but continued anyway as it was ‘normal’ to eat bread in large quantities, until I finally had to address how bloated and uncomfortable I felt from eating bread and once I felt the difference I could no longer dull myself in this way.

Hello Adele and ah yes food from my childhood and how I loved it so. My background is Lebanese and my aunty and Nanna were amazing cooks and my mother still is. They all could make the most amazing Lebanese foods including sweets. I would eat them morning, noon and night. Afterwards you would feel a little sick at times and most of the time after lunch we would all have a sleep, it was like a tradition. These things I grew up with and thought it was a natural part of life. As I got older I realised for me it wasn’t the food part that I craved but I just loved how we would all come together around food. Some of the things would take all day to prepare and then we would eat them the next day. It was a whole weekend thing and we would all be together as a family, laughing, catching up and just being around each other. I realise it’s not the food I crave it’s the feeling of being around others and this is the feeling I really enjoy. If I ate the food we use to cook now, it would have the same impact it had then, I would want to sleep and feel a little sick. At times we relate experiences to the ‘wrong’ thing, in this case for me I use to think it was about food but this was more about family, but even more this was simply about people and being together.

Adele, thank you for this amazing blog! Married to an asian man, I too must say that rice has been a large staple in our past diets, and I can understand how hard it is to fathom life without rice!
However, you are spot on with sharing how it can be and is an addiction and a comfort. I love what you said here: “that it is natural to feel drowsy after eating rice, and most would not question it. We would just feel somewhat unlike ourselves and unable to have optimal clarity after a big rice meal.” This says it all – rice can actually act as a drug in our body if it has the capacity to alter how we feel and affect our clarity of thought. Crazy how this is seen as normal and acceptable too!
But the real bombshell that I loved you sharing is how you used to eat a lot of rice to fill up the emptiness inside. Recently I have found myself overeating and wanting to eat more even though I know I have had enough. This is often a sign there is something I don’t want to feel – but more so I can now say the hunger is not a hunger for food, but that it is a hunger for deeper relationship with myself that I can learn to embrace. Thank you for this awesome awareness!

Comfort foods appear to have a strong relationship with the diet we grew up with in our family of origin. I had never considered this before Adele and now can see that there truly are many layers to some of the seemingly harmless foods we struggle to let go of. It is being honest and going to the deeper issues of what that food brings and the light it shuts down within us. Great Blog and definitely allows for deeper pondering of the choices we make around food.

Each culture has its comfort food, usually in the form a carbohydrate, which becomes a staple that is almost a must have….. But many foods do not support the body to be nourished and nurtured but instead to fill and comfort and they say ” we are what we eat” … Worth pondering!

‘It is truly no longer okay to perpetuate what is not true even though it has been accepted as normal’ – love that sentence…. And sadly gives us a lot to work on, as normal in so many areas is just not truth and as such is failing us miserably.

Following what has been made normal and acceptable and formed to be ‘the way to live life’ Vs how our bodies feel. What I’ve been finding is that the only reason I would fight against my body is because it knows that what has been accepted in society and culture is not necessarily the whole truth and my attachment to fitting in and to not be exposed in playing my part in maintaining this untruth would override this knowing of truth. As such I have not expressed how I truly feel because it would expose others as living a lie and now I as write this I realise and question – if they are living a lie, that has been their choice to do so, but by me not saying anything I too am responsible for that lie being lived. Thus avoiding the power that expressing my feelings can bring to the world…Which makes sense now why the line “hiding from the fullness of who I am is not okay anymore,” stood out for me today.

There was a time when I did not question why I ate what I did and why I needed to fill myself with the foods that I used to avoid feeling what I was feeling. Wheat, gluten, dairy, sugar and alcohol are huge in the culture I come from. In every celebration they seem essential and there always seems to be something to celebrate or reward myself for. Giving them up caused problems socially but felt amazing and so giving them up in many ways was easy. I found substitutes – So culturally I was able to fit in again. Giving up those was not so easy. When I am connected to myself and therefore everyone, I do no longer need to worry about fitting in because I am exactly where I need to be. There is always a deeper place to go. I had filled myself with things that meant I didn’t need to feel what was true. When I feel who I am there is a responsibility to life, a commitment to life that comes with it. It is important to truly feel this.

Perfect time to be reading your blog Adele,
My “rice” is over eating ATM. What I am feeling though is discomfort in my body, and I can sense that this I do not want to continue. There is a deep honesty here being called for, that I have been tippy toeing around. Guess that is about to stop. Thank you for the support your article brings, I can feel an exquisiteness of self and I know that the moment I choose to stay fully with me, that I will not want to over eat.

I can easily relate to the comfort you found in rice, I did the same, I loved rice and would often cook chicken casseroles with rice to comfort me at the end of a busy day or buy sushi telling myself I was being super healthy when if I was honest with myself I knew I was eating the sushi out of comfort and to numb what I did not want to feel.

‘being led by a perception of any culture is also not okay anymore’ one of the cultures in my country is drinking alcohol, something which I’ve always known was poisoning my body and not good for me, although like many others told myself that a small amount of red wine was okay as it was full of antioxidants. What I noticed when I stopped drinking was how much pressure there was to continue drinking especially around occasions of celebration, which when we stop to look it’s bonkers that we celebrate Christmas, weddings and birthdays etc., with something that poisons us.

Recently I have started to cook Chinese food again, something that I have stopped doing for a long time, because at that time it felt impossible. But it became possible again with a deeper acceptance of being Chinese, that culture is not something I have to fear or banish when I can express what is felt to not be true. What became possible was a deeper understanding of myself and a deeper commitment to life, I do not need to protect myself from truly living life, in fact, I feel a deep joy to experience life once again, to take responsibility to learning from my body, to re-build a deeper trust, and knowing this is a process and there is never a destination. In taking the responsibility to live, I also take the responsibility to my mistakes and the responsibility to keep expressing from the truth of myself, and to keep appreciating, confirming myself and rebuilding trust and confidence to be in the world.

With all of this I have also understood deeper why rice is a staple in our culture, why as people we want to hold onto this comfort and not be aware. I also have a deeper understanding of how this comfort feels in my every day life (whether it is rice that I choose to eat or not), and how it impacts me. Comfort basically does not allow me to fully commit to life and connect to others! Cooking Chinese food in a way where we do not have to be held down by comfort, is this possible? This becomes the exploration.

I am wondering how this Chines cooking looks like. I was for a very long time being identified by being a good cook, able to make delicious meals from different cultural backgrounds. But I did that with recipes, and along came consciousnesses, apart from the ingredients not fitting my body anymore. So I let that go, but your little added sharing triggers me to investigate if it is time to pick up cooking from different cuisines once again.Thanks Adele.

The wisdom of our bodies… a beautiful sharing Adele of how we numb ourselves, in your case it was rice, but there are many alternatives we have all used. I recognise ‘It was the beginning of an unmasking of the emptiness I had been covering up all my life’, great that you got to feel this during the retreat, and called this for what it was.

Over the last 12 years I have refined my diet a great deal, and rarely have eaten rice for the past – probably 10 years now. Last year I made some rice salad as part of a spread for a family gathering, and then ate the leftovers in my lunch box for several days afterwards (as of course I had made quite a lot) I realised that this has been an unconscious choice because the hooks of rice, that is the desire to dull, numb and bury what I was feeling in comfort was very strong. My family reminded me that I had been fed rice, secretly as a very young child by a maid hiding in a cupboard, and I suspect I was back for more on many occasions. Really exposing. So here I am an English girl relating totally to all you say here about rice, and it feels so old in my body. Thank you for reminding me that I can now look deeper at what this is showing me.

Just like with rice we have many other things to cover up our emptiness. From the outside I have come a long way, not eating gluten, dairy, sugar, salt, acid, humous (loved that one!), potatoes not drinking alcohol and many other things where my body was telling me “please don’t put this into my body ever again” . And this refinement goes on and on. But now the next step: I can see that the emptiness is still there, but what I now clearly see is that I ‘mistake’ this emptiness as being hungry, and then starting eating food. And to be honest, at this moment in time, eating less food still scares me as I am pretty skinny still. But, hey, step by step, I will grow out of this as well.

Spot on on that one Willem. What we see on the outside–does that harmonize with what it is within? That was the question for me. There was no way to look a part in appearance if it is not truly supported by my within. And whether I feel full or empty, first comes from within and it is wise to be aware of it there, and accept rather than react, As we deepen the love within our bodies, our emptiness gets highlighted, but then do we focus on the emptiness that we can now let go or the fullness of love which is who we are?

I can testify to that as last week I had been feeling like my meals were never enough, I had enough but there was that nagging feeling of wanting something more, that there was something missing in my diet. Yet everything I tried helped for a second but no longer. Now having come closer to myself and holding myself preciously over the last day or two and feeling a settlement in my body because of that that cannot be attained by any food. Yet it is just as delicious, if not more.

I gave up eating rice long ago, along with most carbohydrates. That was not a mental decision, nor one I made overnight, but a part of a progressive way of looking at what I ate based on observation of my own body and how it felt and responded. Today people say, but how do you get your energy? well, I still work as a builder, and exercise quite OK without my carbohydrates, and find myself actually eating more vegetables when I am hungry, rather than filling miyself out with carbohydrates. But what about everything in balance, right? Well, why would you take something that makes you feel lethargic, that you then need to work hard to remove from your system. What could your sleeping body otherwise take care of if it were not set the task overnight of assisting you to recover from poor food choices and otherwise? The old argument about balance is based on this myth that we need to be rewarded for our good behaviour. The problem with this belief is that it actually limits our understanding of what true vitality and awareness that is on offer to us, should we choose to truly look after ourselves. For every time you take a step forwards, you take a step backwards in the name of balance, and thus end up really going nowhere.

Its interesting how our culture can identify us with certain foods. My family grew up in Asia and we ate a lot of rice as kids (never pasta or potatoes) it was always rice. This was different to the meals our friends ate, as I grew older and lived independently rice dropped out of my diet and I went more for the breads and potato chips. Now if I eat any of these- rice, potato, bread I feel that heavy bloated feeling and I just want to go to sleep. Its interesting how some of our nations’ staples are foods that dull us.

It is very exposing the way we can use a food such as rice to numb ourselves and not be aware, I remember I went through a stage that I would eat brown or organic rice and used to boast how healthy I was, what an illusion! Thanks to the teachings of Universal Medicine I too have learnt to listen to my body with honesty and let go of foods that only delay my own evolution. Thank you Adele!

Telling the world they are hiding behind what is rice, bread, pizza, potatoes etc etc is not going to go down well, for when we do not feel the love within us, our choices would not reflect this love. How can we then allow another to feel the love that is within them, the love that is irrefutably so? In my living experience it is to be honest to my choices and no matter whether these choices are loving or not, whether I am aware or not when these choices are made, to then start living this irrefutable love for myself—to love myself no matter what my choices have been and are presently.

Looking at the foods we use as ‘fillers’ is a great undertaking – not only for our physical well-being, but as you’ve outlined here Adele, rice was used to numb oneself, i.e. basically to shut down awareness, and make us more dull than we naturally are in our meeting of life and all that may unfold in it.
And so letting go of such a food choice is about far more than the actual food, isn’t it – for how do we want to be in our daily living? All of who we are, or a dulled and diminished version… Huge food for pondering (excuse the pun, but couldn’t help put it in for its relevance here… ☺ )

Breaking away from a familial, societal and cultural ‘norm’ can oftentimes bring about disapproval from others, reaction and even alarm… Yet if we make such a change founded upon the truth that comes from our innate connection with who we are, and the wise signals our own bodies continually offer to us – it is truth that is the winner, as it rightly deserves to be. And then, sometimes, others who have been as entrenched in a customary behaviour as we ourselves were, may be inspired to consider if not make their own choices…

What you have expressed here Adele is so very powerful and wise, thank you;
“For in the stillness of my heart, overriding how my body is feeling is not okay anymore, hiding from the fullness of who I am is not okay anymore, and being led by a perception of any culture is also not okay anymore.

Thank you Adele for a beautifully honest sharing of how you came to understand and let go of the dulling that eating rice caused in your body. This cultural embedding of certain foods runs through many cultures, as each have their own food that is the norm, to become aware of how these foods leave us dull and lethargic; connecting to the wisdom of the body is indeed a blessing and leaves us with a choice to connect to our deeper self and bring loving care to our body.

“who would ever question the consumption of something so inherent to our culture and traditional identity?” if we are indentifying ourselves with our culture it easily can justify behaviours like eating rice as normal and ok, even though they might be not true for us and our body. The only thing we can identify ourselves with without the before mentioned happening is the light of our soul.

Food is a most interesting subject. Of course, there are physical withdrawal symptoms whenever one removes something from their diet or has to do without, but then of course once those symptoms have past, there are much deeper emotional attachments that one becomes aware of, which all too often stop us from making choices that we know to be true.

So interesting. You mention here that you got to feel how hungry you were without rice but actually it was how ’empty’ you felt without rice. This is something I have felt alot over the years that I have been paying attention to my over-eating pattern. I feel I am hungry when there is no physical way that I am, I know I have eaten a good meal yet I still want more. Many psychologists and nutritionists have said to me over the years that taking time to be present when you eat means your body can feel the food, it can feel when it is full. Without having a relationship with our bodies we can build patterns of behaviour that feed dis-ordered eating. There is always so much more to understand but addressing the emptiness inside, an emptiness that has nothing to do with food is a great place to start.

I too grew up around rice and certain carbohydrates as part of my staple diet and remember the slumber afterwards – not pleasant when I’d indulge on coffee to counteract this.

I have recently returned from overseas after visiting family and it was interesting to observe the reactions when I expressed I was not eating rice anymore. There are times I have cravings for rice cooked in a certain way and it brings my awareness to why I am craving this, I now know it’s because I have gone into the doing of things and exhausted my body. When I am truly living, the cravings that makes me feel dense and heavy are no longer there.

All those filling foods like rice and bread, pasta and pastry, cake and puddings, they all make us feel nicely content and slow us down dulling our thoughts or making them racy depending on the sugar content. Whatever, we get a false idea of being ok and everything is alright just as it is, a false sense of security if you like. And in your case Adele I can see how attached this was to your identity growing up as Chinese in Asia. We could say pasta in Italy, potatoes in Ireland and would it be bread or cake in England, Germany and France? Anyway letting go of this is a big thing but I can attest to the benefits and how life becomes so much more full, rather than our bellies, without it.

My understanding is that to our human body, rice is simply sugar in another form. I like that you have identified the huge comfort in it and I used to say that rice and potatoes were the favourite parts of a meal. We need to start to realise that comfort far from being the good thing we tell ourselves it is is actually a poison for us.

Who would have thought that, rice being an addiction. I do recognize the emptiness I feel inside since I have dropped eating excessive amounts of food, including rice. And that there is difference between truly hungry and an emptiness.

We get caught in ideas in the cultures we grow up in and often we do not extricate ourselves from them, even if our body tells that they do not feel great, where are many in my culture growing up, social drinking is great, Saturday night is a blow out night be it food, drink or behaviour, eating lots of food at Christmas and dairy every day as a child with a held belief that this grows your bones; all of these are cultures ideas not realities. And they are emotional ideas as well and dare to challenge and we get a back lash; however when we heed the body’s wisdom we can handle the back lash and much more. The steadiness and contentment experienced from learning to honour the body and listen to the soul is like no other.

We hardly ever question our long standing traditions and customs and instead tend to honour them that surely they must be good otherwise why would they be kept as such. It’s very beautiful when truth finds its way in and starts to stir things up.

It’s interesting the polarities and contradictions that we are taught as children – on one hand Adele you were taught that you were good children if you ate alot of rice and on the other hand you were ‘taught through a traditional saying “fan hey gung sum” (direct translation: ‘the energy of the rice invading the heart’) …and that it is natural to feel drowsy after eating rice, and most would not question it’. No wonder we are all confused about what is true and what is not true in the world around us when what we are being taught all too often contradicts itself.